When
Suraya Dalil went to medical school in Afghanistan in the late 1980s,
many of her classmates were women.But after a decade of
war and political oppression, most of them left the country. Dalil,
who graduated from the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) at
age 35 in June with a master's degree in health care management,
is one of the few who insists on staying.

"War in my country has given me lots of pain," says Dalil, adding that
she could not have come to Harvard without a full-tuition Presidential Scholarship
from the University. "But I feel I would be more effective and useful at
home. My contribution is very much valued there."

The '90s
were particularly painful. In 1992, just months after she graduated
from the Kabul Medical Institute in the Afghan capital, the Soviet-led
communist government fell, and the mujahideen--freedom fighters against
the Soviets--took control of Kabul, then began fighting each other.
During a three-day ceasefire, Dalil moved more than 150 miles north
with her parents, two sisters, and two brothers to Mazar-e-Sharif.

"We
thought we'd be there for three months," says Dalil. "Our
return took 10 years, because the fighting never stopped."

Based in
Mazar-e-Sharif, she worked as an emergency physician for Doctors Without
Borders (Medicins Sans Frontieres), caring for refugees from
neighboring war-torn Tajikistan. Then, as a medical officer for the
International Organization for Migration (IOM), she established a clinic
at a transit center for refugees returning from Pakistan and Iran.
The IOM program shut down as weather and a lack of security made traveling
too difficult, and Dalil took a job with UNICEF Mazar-e-Sharif, where
she has worked on immunization and nutrition initiatives for the last
decade.

Lifting
the veil
In 1998, the Taliban--mujahideen who rose to power during the civil war--arrived
in Mazar-e-Sharif, and Dalil's family, which now included her husband and the
first of two daughters, fled to Islamabad, Pakistan. Although the Islamic fundamentalist
regime generally forbade women from going to school, holding jobs, or moving
about without a male escort, female physicians were allowed to work. Over the
next few years, Dalil, wearing a burkha and accompanied by her husband, regularly
traveled over the border to Afghan hospitals, where she ran training sessions
in primary care for midwives and doctors, most of them women.

"Considering
how hard it must have been to get things done, she's accomplished a
tremendous amount," says Professor of Management Nancy
Kane, Dalil's
academic adviser. Kane calls Dalil "fearless," not only for
taking risks in Afghanistan but also for coming to Boston, without
her husband and two young daughters, to live and study using a language
she first learned as a medical student.

After the
U.S. helped oust the Taliban from power in 2002, Dalil returned to
Kabul, where she and her husband rebuilt the nearly destroyed apartment
she had grown up in. In the role of Safe Motherhood project officer
for UNICEF, she co-authored a maternal mortality study sponsored by
the new Afghan government's Ministry of Health, UNICEF, and the U.S.
Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention.

Published
in the March 5, 2005, issue of The Lancet, the study highlights
a tragic result of women's limited access to health care. As of 2002,
Afghanistan's maternal mortality rate was 1,600 deaths per 100,000
live births. (In the U.S., the rate is eight per 100,000.) Dalil says
the vast majority of maternal deaths could have been prevented had
emergency obstetrical services and skilled birth attendants been available.

The new
Afghan government, with support from donor agencies and the United
Nations, is working to improve these numbers. The Ministry of Health
wants to ensure that at least one emergency obstetrical-care facility
exists in every Afghan province, and it is also training midwives,
particularly in rural areas where more women die in childbirth.

Rebuilding
the health system
Implementing these changes, says Dalil, is "great, but hard." It
will take years before the next generation of women doctors is educated. And
Afghanistan still lacks basic infrastructure. After more than three years under
the new government, Dalil's apartment only gets about five hours of electricity
every two days in winter. Hospitals, she says, have too-low standards for sterilizing
instruments, and few of them house blood banks.

"War
is the worst thing that can happen," says Dalil of her country's
23 years of conflict. Though she is grateful to other nations and granting
agencies, "we should be able to stand on our feet," she says.
With this in mind, Dalil sought admission to HSPH for the 2004-'05
academic year.

"She
was the highlight of teaching the class," says Jane
Lindsey, a
senior research scientist who taught Dalil biostatistics, a required
MPH course. Though Dalil hadn't done math in more than 15 years, "she
sat down and worked and worked and worked. Her attitude to the challenge
was to work harder."

Dalil has
the same attitude about Afghanistan. While at Harvard, she accepted
the post of project officer for policy and training at UNICEF, the
organization's highest-ranking position in Afghanistan. She returned
in June to help rebuild her country's health system.

"The
day I die, Suraya will be on my list of people who impressed me most," says
Lindsey. "I hope she sends more women like her over here." Dalil
says she intends to do so.